Back Issues

May 2009 - Issue 422

It was all about equality and respect – values few would have a problem with. So just when did multiculturalism become a dirty word? Was it about the same time as the ideas of respecting difference and embracing diversity began to be overtaken in the public mind by shrill religious fundamentalism and hectoring traditionalists?

This month’s NI sees a vibrant selection of contributors tackling these questions: British and Canadian cultural commentators Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Haroon Siddiqui; Indian journalist Shoma Chaudhury who has met the country’s leading hate-mongers; and the Mauritian novelist Lindsey Collen, who looks behind her island nation’s image as a multicultural haven.

April 2009 - Issue 421

So, what are banks for, exactly? Not to create global turmoil and drain the public purse, surely! Come to think of it, what’s money for? Or houses? Or credit? Or taxation? Or the economy? Or the environment... or... or anything?

With the global economic system in meltdown, the once booming chorus of ‘Let the Market Decide’ is pretty ragged and unconvincing these days.

And a good job too. Welcome, the Age of Possibility - the main theme of this month’s New Internationalist. In it, we look at how to create the kind of world we want to live in. We envisage a people-centred economics that serves the majority. And we seize the opportunity for some real democracy, for a change.

March 2009 - Issue 420

50-year-old Mabinty Conteh and her 18-month-old granddaughter Isatu are from Sierra Leone. Mabinty is holding up a photo of her daughter, who died giving birth to Isatu at the age of 20. Women in Sierra Leone have a 1 in 8 lifetime chance of dying in childbirth. The risk for women in Ireland, meanwhile, is 1 in 47,600.

The gulf between the Global North and the Global South is greater on this than on any other indicator – and progress towards this Millennium Development Goal is all but non-existent. Yet, as this month’s issue of the NI explains, everybody knows how these women’s lives could be saved. So why the hell is nobody doing anything about it?

Jan/Feb 2009 - Issue 419

The impending climate crisis will make the financial meltdown look like a teddy bear's picnic - and it's the world's poor and marginalized who will suffer the most. We know what's coming, and we have the means to prevent it. And yet we're just staring climate oblivion in the face. As the world continues to belch out greenhouse gases, and governments and corporations champion false solutions, a movement for climate justice is building. Its aim is to tackle perhaps the greatest challenge of our troubled times - how we can dramatically reduce global emissions while at the same time raising the quality of life for the majority of the world's people. This magazine will explore what can be done.

December 2008 - Issue 418

The current meltdown of the global financial system has knocked the crisis caused by runaway food prices out of the news. The fate of investment bankers simply gets more ink than that of those on the edge of starvation. But there is a common thread here – irresponsible profit-seeking with little regard for the future of the vulnerable. This issue dissects the ‘perfect storm’ of conditions that have devastated agriculture in the global south and is undermining the world’s ability to feed itself. The current food price boom is connected to a longer term trend that has created a trap of dependency on an industrial food system based on food imports and agro-chemical inputs. But the NI discovers that it doesn’t take Houdini to find a way out.

November 2008 - Issue 417

As the war in Afghanistan intensifies we ask Afghan writers and journalists how they see events unfolding and what they think their country needs to end decades of violent conflict.

Not surprisingly, what they have to say is rather different from the statements emanating from Western politicians and mainstream media pundits.

This month’s issue of the New Internationalist gives you a different - and more authentic - perspective on one of the world’s key issues. Not only are the articles written by Afghans, but the images too are the work of first-rate photographers and cartoonists from the country.

October 2008 - Issue 416

Cut, cut, cut! ‘Read my lips – no more taxes!’ For the better part of a generation, political mantras about tax have been deliberately misleading. ‘Small’ government and ‘lower’ taxes have not cut the tax bill or government budgets. They have camouflaged a switch from taxes on personal and corporate wealth to taxes on anyone and anything else. Today, the more political power you have, the less tax you are likely to pay. A tax ‘consensus’ has been quietly engineered by the IMF and imposed worldwide, regardless of democratic preference or absolute human needs. As globalization goes mental and public funds prop up the world’s banks, this month the NI uncovers the global tax scandal - and suggests where justice might lie.

September 2008 - Issue 415

Sixty years ago plastic was an exotic development of modern chemistry. Today it is the most widespread human-made substance in the world. More than 250 billion pounds of raw plastic pellets are produced from petroleum feedstock every year. It is everywhere, in places you never imagined: computers and cell phones; packaging; food and drink containers; home furnishings and building materials; cars, trucks, airplanes and boats; children’s toys and beauty products.

August 2008 - Issue 414

2.6 billion people around the world don’t have a WC or any other kind of decent toilet. Because ‘faecal perils’ land up on hands, feet and lips, two million of them – mostly children – die of diarrhoeal disease every year. The toll in indignity and distress, especially among women, is less measurable but arguably far worse. Out on the excretory frontier, toilet pioneers are strutting their stuff with goose-necks and waterseals, sanplats and the ecological approach. But they won’t get far unless people – rich and famous, poor and deprived – can be persuaded to confront the unmentionable and call a spade a spade. This issue of New Internationalist looks at who and what are carrying the sanitary flame in the 21st century.

July 2008 - Issue 413

There is an almost beautiful simplicity to the Ecuadorian leader’s proposal. Rafael Correa has said that his Government is prepared not to extract nearly a billion barrels of oil from Yasuní National Park, a part of the Amazon rainforest of extraordinary but fragile ecological and cultural richness. To do so, however, Ecuador will need to be compensated by the international community to the tune of at least $350 million per annum for the next 10 years. The June 2008 deadline for this proposal to save Yasuní has been extended, but time is running out and the oil companies are poised ready to drill. This month’s issue of New Internationalist looks at what’s happening to a bold plan that could point the way to breaking oil dependency – but which is also fraught with possible snares and pitfalls. And it listens to the people most affected – the indigenous and other peoples of Yasuní itself.

June 2008 - Issue 412

Do we need to worry about nuclear weapons any more? After the end of the Cold War, the world stepped back from the brink of mutually-assured annihilation and nuclear stockpiles were halved. But nukes haven't gone away. In fact, they are undergoing something of a renaissance. India, Pakistan and North Korea have all recently joined the nuclear club. The US, Russia, Britain, China and France are spending billions on 'modernizing' their nuclear arsenals. So why are disarmament campaigners so upbeat? The NI discovers a window of opportunity for banning the bomb – but can we seize the moment before the shutters slam down, perhaps for good?

May 2008 - Issue 411

Burma should be celebrating 60 years of independence, but instead the country is colonized from within. The military dictatorship that’s got its jackboot on the nation’s neck now goes by the name of the State Peace and Development Council. But peace and development are just two things among many it has not managed to deliver – large sections of the country are riven by civil war as armed groups fight military rule and, often, each other. The NI speaks with Burmese people, both inside and outside the country. With great fear and courage they are trying to keep the flame of freedom alight.

what's new
ON THE NI SITE

Obama and the denial of genocide
This April, Barack Obama broke campaign promise #511, namely to explicitly acknowledge the Armenian genocide as US President. Mickey Z gets writer-activist David Boyajian’s take on the new President's approach.

The fading roar
Without the Tigers, can the Tamils ever obtain equality?

Battle lines drawn over the Amazon
Legitimate indigenous protests against Peru’s latest free trade agreements have led to bloodshed following the Government’s decision to send in the military. Ben Powless reports.

Absolute friends
The largest solidarity movement between two peoples offers hope in Western Sahara, writes Paul Rigg.

Boycott meets girl
Shopping causes all sorts of moral dilemmas when goods are labelled 'West Bank', bemoans Anna Chen.